Children

BEITBRIDGE, Zimbabwe (IDN) – Child trafficking is alive and thriving on Zimbabwe’s southern border. Despite Zimbabwe winning a few "Brownie points" with the U.S. government for rescuing more than 100 female Zimbabwean trafficking victims from Kuwait recently, police at Beitbridge – a border town between Zimbabwe and South Africa – say they arrest between16 and 20 people every day implicated in illegally "transporting" unaccompanied children through Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police (or ZRP) Officer Commanding Beitbridge District, Chief Superintendent, Francis Phiri, said the children recovered from these arrests are handed over to the government's social welfare department to have them returned to their homes in Zimbabwe.

ROME (IDN) - She is 10-years-old when she is raped by her mother’s companion and becomes pregnant. Extremely ill, undernourished and underweight during her pregnancy, her mother requests an abortion and although the law permits termination of a pregnancy if authorities deem the carrier’s health is in danger, the request is denied by the State.

The girl’s mother is arrested and temporarily imprisoned for failing in her duty of care to her daughter, despite having previously reported the abuse to the police, who did not act.

Meanwhile, the State sends the girl to an institution against her wishes, where she is made to stay until the birth of her child. She is not allowed any visitors, apart from an aunt who is allowed to come once a week for two hours.

NAIROBI (ACP-IDN) – In Kenya, a high burden tuberculosis (TB) country, infants and young children are at very high risk of developing severe and often fatal strains of the disease, and are estimated to comprise 10-11 percent of all TB cases.

In order to combat the disease, primarily among children but also the population in general, the country is putting mechanisms in place, including better equipment for TB testing, and in 2016 became the first country in the world to roll out child-friendly TB medicines.

Overseen by TB Alliance, an international non-governmental organisation that supports the development of affordable tuberculosis drugs, the medicines are easier for caregivers to give and for children to take and are expected to help improve treatment and child survival.

BERLIN | VIENNA (IDN) – Almost a third of all humans traded around the world for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labour, or commercial sexual exploitation are children, and women and girls comprise 71 per cent of the victims of "human trafficking", according to a new report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

This is the first in a series of features on the South Pacific produced in collaboration with Wansolwara, an independent student newspaper of the University of the South Pacific.

SUVA, Fiji (IDN) - Two women’s rights activists have raised alarm bells about the need to protect Solomon Island children, especially girls, from being exploited by foreigners, who are involved in the South Pacific island nation’s logging industry.

The activists, Sister Doreen Awaiasi and Lynffer Maltungtung, say there are countless incidents in which under-age girls and young women are given to foreigners by their parents, or are lured by riches, but not much is being done to stop these or to educate the locals against engaging in such illegal acts.

SYDNEY (IDN) - Screening of secretly filmed shocking footage of abuse of juvenile prisoners in a remote northern Australian prison by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC), renowned investigative reporting program ‘Four Corners’, has outraged thousands of Australians who took to the streets to protest and forced the government to act.

The video material filmed between 2010 and 2014 at the Don Dale youth detention centre in the Northern Territory in Australia and screened on July 25 has drawn comparisons to the treatment of prisoners in the notorious prisons run by the U.S. government in Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

GENEVA (IDN) - Child labour is rampant around the world: some 168 million children working in various sectors of the economy – ranging from agriculture to mining, from manufacturing to tourism – are producing goods and services consumed by millions every day.

Marking the World Day against Child Labour on June 12, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) has drawn the focus on the plight of children toiling in some of the most hazardous jobs.

“That child labour has no place in well-functioning and well-regulated markets is evident. But the reality is that today, child labour remains widespread in supply chains,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder in a statement that focussed on child labour and supply chains.